Studio TF1 is stirring up excitement with its latest animated venture, Yes Chef a family comedy set in the whimsical world of a televised pastry competition. This $25 million project, unveiled at the Annecy Animation film festival promises a delightful blend of humor and spectacle, featuring anthropomorphic animals in a high-stakes baking show.
The film, produced by Studio TF1, Octopolis, and nWave Pictures, is directed by Annie Carrel and Benjamin Mousquet, who previously worked on the Chickenhare series. Written by Lauren Hynek and Elizabeth Martin, known for their work on Disney‘s live-action Mulan and Skydance Animation’s Spellbound Yes Chef is set to hit theaters in 2028.
The Making of Yes Chef
The collaboration between Studio TF1 and Matthieu Zeller of Octopolis marks a significant investment for the studio. Nathalie Toulza Madar, managing director of Studio TF1, emphasized the unique partnership, noting that this is one of the most fully invested animated projects in recent memory. The film’s animation is being handled by nWave Studios, Octopolis, and Blue Spirit, with UMedia serving as the tax shelter partner.
Yes Chef is not just a film; it’s a new original IP with significant potential. Toulza Madar highlighted the strategic importance of starting with a feature film to build the brand’s life. The project aligns with nWave’s tradition of creating broad-audience animated features that bring families together in movie theaters.
A World of Anthropomorphic Animals
The story unfolds in an anthropomorphic animal world around a long-running TV pastry contest hosted by charismatic chef André Lamour. The competition brings together duos of contestants, including a grandmother sheep and her teenage lamb grandson, deer cousins, twin cat sisters, and other animal bakers. Behind the scenes, Jeanne Gazelle, a frazzled producer, panics over declining ratings and pushes the show toward increasingly spectacular challenges.
As the competition spins out of control, the contestants rebel with a cry of No Chef taking back the show and returning it to the heart of baking: working together, sharing, and taking pleasure in making and eating a good cake. The film is a real comedy in this world, with trials piling up and all the comedy and spectacle you can imagine—flour, eggs, falling meringues, and fur exploding everywhere.
The Vision Behind Yes Chef
Matthieu Zeller, a former high-ranking executive at Studiocanal, has a track record of delivering reasonably budgeted indie European animation movies that work well in theaters. The idea for Yes Chef grew out of several converging trends, from the enduring popularity of baking shows to the explosion of baking videos on TikTok and the broader family appeal of food as entertainment.
Zeller emphasized the legitimacy of French and European creators in this universe, noting that baking and cooking are very much a family thing. The project fits naturally with the kind of broad-audience animated features nWave has been making, designed to bring children, parents, and grandparents together in a movie theater.
The film is also a technical shift for nWave, as it will be the first made entirely with a Maya-Houdini pipeline, developed in coordination with Blue Spirit. At $25 million, Yes Chef sits in the same budget range as nWave’s recent features, modest compared with major U.S. studio animation but ambitious by European standards.
Studio TF1 was also present at Cannes this year with several titles, including László Nemes’ World War II drama Moulin which played in competition and stars Gilles Lellouche as French Resistance hero Jean Moulin.
